10 Stompboxes That Changed the World

In the 2009 documentary It Might Get Loud,
Jimmy Page remembers telling Roger Mayer
that he was looking to get more sustain out
of his guitar, so Mayer went off and invented
the Tone Bender. The only thing is, it was
actually engineer Gary Hurst who designed
the little wedge-shaped box in 1965 (it was
almost 50 years ago—so we can give the
former Yardbird and Zep man a break!).
Hurst licensed his creation to Sola Sound in
London, and pretty soon blues-rock bands all
over England were getting a deep, juicy sustain
out of their solos. As Page told the local
fanzine Hit Parader in 1968 (shortly before
he founded Led Zeppelin), “I get 75 percent
of my sound with [the Tone Bender]. It’s very
similar to a fuzz box, but I can sustain notes
for several minutes if I want to.”

Page’s guitar on the first Zep album seems
to cook from the inside out with a signature
Tone Bender sound (speculation says the
MK II model), most notably on “Dazed and
Confused” and “You Shook Me.” The unit’s
appearances became less obvious on subsequent
Zep recordings, but its association with
Page was etched in stone. “It was this phenomenal
thing,” he marvels in It Might Get
Loud, “a distortion pedal that could make the
guitar sound pretty rude.”

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